Telephone communication is increasingly becoming more important in the modern world. In order to accommodate frequent uses of telephone communication, a user may often prefer to know a caller's identity prior to answering the call. A receiver of a telephone call may employ devices which display caller identification and may even announce a caller's name or phone number. For example, one of these devices may announce that "Bob Jones is calling". The name "Bob Jones" is typically stored in a database at the call receiver's location as an audio file. The audio file is typically pre-recorded by the call receiver. The call receiver may identify a telephone number and record a name associated with the telephone number such that when a call that originated from the recorded telephone number is received, the recording associated with the telephone number may be announced or displayed.
A problem may arise when a caller calls a call receiver for the first time. The call receiver most likely has not yet recorded the identity of this new caller and will not have the caller's identification displayed or announced. Alternatively, a caller may be an infrequent caller. A call receiver may not take the time to record caller identification information for an infrequent caller and yet may desire the caller to be identified.
Another option for the call receiver is to employ some devices which may perform number to speech conversion, such as "seven-two-three-one-five-eight-seven is calling". Number to speech conversions allow a call receiver to know who is calling without the need for easy access to a display. Number to speech conversions also allow a call receiver to know who is calling without pre-recording the identity of the caller. Even though the number to speech conversion may identify the phone number of the caller, it is often difficult for many people to recognize and associate a phone number with an individual.
It would be desirable to have a system and method that allows easy identification of a caller without requiring the call receiver to have previously identified the caller and pre-recorded the caller's identity. It would also be desirable to announce a name or display an image without the call receiver first having to record an association of the caller with a phone number. The present invention addresses such a need.